Beginning of the End: The Great Test: Whom Would God Acknowledge?

 The next day the two hundred fifty princes, with Korah leading them, presented themselves with their censers, while the people gathered to await the result. It was not Moses who assembled the congregation to see the defeat of Korah and his company. The rebels, in their blind judgment, had called them together to witness their victory. A large part of the congregation openly sided with Korah.

Korah had left the assembly to join Dathan and Abiram when Moses, with the seventy elders, went down with a last warning to the men who had refused to come to him. At God’s direction, Moses told the people, “Depart now from the tents of these wicked men! Touch nothing of theirs, lest you be consumed in all their sins.” The people obeyed, for a sense of approaching judgment rested on all. The chief rebels saw  themselves abandoned by those whom they had deceived, but they stood their ground with their families, defying the divine warning.

Moses now declared in the hearing of the congregation, “By this you shall know that the Lord has sent me to do all these works, for I have not done them of my own will. If these men die naturally like all men ... then the Lord has not sent me. But if the Lord creates a new thing, and the earth opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into the pit, then you will understand that these men have rejected the Lord.”
As he finished speaking, the solid earth split open and the rebels went down alive into the pit, with all their goods, and “they perished from among the assembly.” The people ran away, self-condemned as those who had taken part in the sin.

But the judgments were not ended. Fire flashing from the cloud consumed the two hundred fifty princes who had offered incense. These men had not been destroyed with the chief rebellion planners. They were allowed to see their end and to have an opportunity to repent, but their sympathies were with the rebels, and they shared their fate.

The entire congregation shared in their guilt, for to a greater or lesser degree, all had sympathized with them. Yet the people who had permitted themselves to be deceived were still given time to repent.

Jesus, the Angel who went before the Hebrews, was working to save them from destruction. The judgment of God had come very near and appealed to them to repent. Now, if they would respond to God’s leading, they could be saved. But their rebellion was not cured—that night they returned to their tents terrified, but not repentant.

Korah had flattered them until they really believed themselves to be a very good people, wronged and abused by Moses. They had foolishly cherished the hope that a new order of things was about to be established in which there would be praise instead of reproof, and no troubles instead of worry and trials. The men who had died had spoken flattering words and promised great interest and love for them, and the people decided that somehow Moses had been the cause of their destruction.

The Israelites had proposed putting both Moses and Aaron to death, yet they did not spend that night of probation in repentance and confession, but in planning some way to resist the evidence that showed them to be the greatest of sinners. They still cherished hatred of the men God had appointed, and braced themselves to resist their authority.

“On the next day all the congregation of the children of Israel complained against Moses and Aaron, saying, ‘You have killed the people of the Lord.’” And they were about to move violently against their faithful, self-sacrificing leaders.